Boston firearms licensing now requires appointment

The Boston Police Department is now requiring that LTC applicants call ahead and make an appointment for their application.  Before that, you could walk in from the street, pay your $100 and get the criminal treatment (background check, fingerprinting, etc.).

The reason given for the change is that there is a surge in license applications and the licensing department needs to balance their workload, but this doesn't make given that licensing is a self-financing operation.  Of every $100 application fee, $25 goes to the feds for the background check, $50 goes to the Boston Police, and $25 goes to the Commonwealth to spend as they please (yes, you read that right).  

If every application process takes about a half hour, the $50 of revenue per application should be able to support staffing the licensing office at an appropriate level to allow walk-ins.  Sadly there's no political will in Boston to do this.  

No advanced notice was given of the change, and I'd like to know how many applicants the office is turning away - people who took the morning off from work to make the trip to headquarters to get a gun license.  Imagine the uproar if the government used this practice for voter registration.